A customer of a bank, who has one or more funds-containing accounts with the bank, will frequently use an automatic teller machine (ATM) to perform transactions which are entirely automated. Under certain circumstances, it may appear to the customer that he or she is using the ATM for a transaction in which he or she submits a check and simply receives cash in return, seemingly without reference to the customer's bank account. In reality, however, the customer's bank account does figure into the transaction.
More specifically, the ATM verifies that the customer has a funds-containing account. The ATM may require that the account contain funds which are available for withdrawal in an amount which is part or all of the check amount. This is because a bank may limit the withdrawal of funds from an account for several days after those funds were deposited, until the check used to deposit them has had time to be refused. Alternately, or in addition, the ATM may put a "hold" on funds in the account, in an amount which is part or all of the check amount. If the customer does not have an institutional account, if there are not enough total funds in the account, or if there are not enough funds in the account which are available for withdrawal, the check-cashing transaction may be refused in whole or in part.
There are other persons who, for one reason or another, do not maintain a bank account, but still need to cash checks. These persons are sometimes referred to as the "unbanked". When an unbanked person has a check to cash, he or she goes to a convenience store, a grocery store, or some other store, and deals directly with a human clerk rather than a terminal such as an ATM. The store will normally charge a service fee for cashing the check, and some states place an upper limit on the amount of the service fee which may legally be charged.
There are a few terminals which are available for use by unbanked persons. However, these terminals do not implement an automated check-cashing transaction. Instead, they provide an audiovisual link between the customer and a human operator at a remote location. The remote operator can visually and verbally interact with the customer, to determine whether to authorize the transaction. For example, the operator may ask the customer to present a driver's license, and/or some other identification, and may visually observe each such document presented. Thus, the transaction is based entirely on human interaction, and is very similar to the situation in which the customer cashes a check at a convenience store through direct interaction with a human sales clerk.
Sometimes, a terminal of this type will have some additional capability which facilitates biometric analysis. For example, the terminal may permit scanning of the face of the person so that certain features can be compared to known parameters, in order to help the remote operator verify that the customer is in fact who he or she claim to be, and thus determine whether to authorize the check-cashing transaction.
Although check-cashing arrangements of the type discussed above have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been satisfactory in all respects. In particular, in the case of an unbanked person, the person must interact with another human, either in person or through an audiovisual interface. For each such check-cashing transaction, a certain amount of time is necessarily required for the other person to examine identification and otherwise determine whether or not to authorize the check-cashing transaction. Thus, the overhead costs associated with the human clerk or operator can be relatively significant. Therefore, and since some states put upper limits on the amount of the service fee which may be charged for cashing some or all types of checks, the potential profit represented by the difference between the service fee and the overhead cost may be minimal, even when the maximum allowable service fee is charged. This may discourage some stores from providing a check-cashing service for the unbanked.